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Birthday

On Saturday I turned twenty five.

As I woke up that morning, much later than planned, around 10:30, I felt peaceful, relieved and determined at the same time.

Peaceful, because I knew not only for a fact, but truly in my heart that worrying would get me nowhere. I connected with my inner wisdom, certainly the one that comes with greatage, and decided it was unproductive to blame myself for waking up so late instead of beginning my birthday at 6 or 7 a.m. as had been planned the night before. But the night before I had to work on the beautiful dress I had made my god-daughter an it took me some time to transform it a bit so it could fit, so I went to bed late and missed the “beaty sleep” alarm. Things don’t always go as planned, even those you plan for yourself. Something can get in the way and it’s up to us not to blame the circumstances… well not too much at least. Today I grasped at last that every step I take is a new step, that musn’t be compared to the one before and musn’t be an example for the next one: the fact that I got up at 11 a.m. and had a breakfast that could feed a bunch of people for two days doesn’t mean that I will spend an awful day on the couch. With a little more laughing at oneself and a little less self-pitying anything can be turned around, at any time.

Every day is a day by itself. A new birth and a little death, all within 24 hours. Every day is a possibility and is full of possibilities.

As every day brings the promise of new and endless possibilities, the day we celebrate our birth is special because it is a landmark and because it has the properties of one. In the space of your entire life, your birthday gives you the opportunity to see where and when you stand in your life. For example, as I’m turning 25, I can reflect on the quarter of a century that got wrapped up that day and/or imagine and plan the 25 years ahead. It works, of course, if you’re one of those people who know what they want from life and who can plan where they will be in five, ten or twenty years. It’s not that I don’t like to plan or that I’d rather leave it to the convenient fate, but I think the best way of living is living now, in this moment, in this second, because you don’t know what can happen next. Today I felt the life, my life, going through me, forming a line from the moment of my birth to this first great milestone of twenty-five.

I felt as if I was waiting to turn twenty-five for many years, living the life of an adult without really considering myself to be one. On saturday, as I woke up in the morning, everything fell into place. I feel whole, adult, woman.

Of course, those kind of feelings can come to you at any age. I was the first surprised to learn that for me twenty-five was the big number, the scary one but also the important one. Hell, for how long have I tried to look like or behave like women in their mid-twenties without realizing I was getting too much ahead and spoiling the fun of living at my own pace! Now that I’m twenty-five, I feel like I don’t have to copy anyone anymore, as if I myself became a potential role-model for those who are yet uncertain about their adulthood. It sounds kind of silly, if not wrong: nobody should ever copy anyone and even less rely on numbers to feel oneself growing. Still, wisdom works in mysterious ways.

As a result of this mind shifting, everything I did before as a chore, I see now as natural activity of the woman and adult I’ve become.